Harry Potter and the Fractured Apocalypse
by Kevin3
Summary: Looking for something different? Something compelling, with a plot that isn't cookie-cutter and predictable? This is the epic for you. 1981 didn't go as it was fated, leaving the world of 1994 a crumbling, fractured apocalypse. Between runes that promise the end of the world and the possibility of magic dying entirely, Harry has a difficult path ahead of him.
1. A Five Year Old God

A quick note before beginning this story. A lot of stories involve hand-holding; the reader is always aware of exactly what's going on, with no mystery as to the plot or transpirings. This isn't one of those stories. Enjoy!

**Harry Potter and the Fractured Apocalypse**

**PART I: TIMELESS**

**Chapter 1 - A Five Year Old God**

Harry casually looked around the landscape. It was as if the world couldn't decide whether it wanted to be a prairie or a forest or a lowland marsh - so it blended the three together in a hodge-podge of mismatched terra.

A classic sign of disorganization.

At least it was sunny out. Thank heavens for small favors. He hated depressed people.

The only denizens of the strange world were Harry and... hmm. He hadn't even bothered asking her name earlier. Understandable - since when he first met the woman, she seemed rather standoffish.

Now, though? This may be her world, but _he_ was in charge.

"Hello?" the woman asked uncertainly, the tenor of a small confused child, not sure what to do.

"Hello," Harry said confidently. "You really want to follow me back to my place."

"I do," she replied - half in question, half in statement. She clearly wanted to say something, but she couldn't quite decide what; she merely stood quietly, blinking uncertainly.

"That's because you find me irresistably attractive," Harry supplied effortlessly.

"I do."

Harry still discerned a note of uncertainty.

"Oh, absolutely. So much so, that you have to hold yourself back from losing control of your passion."

The woman nodded; Harry smirked, judging his job complete. The landscape and the stranger dissolved into black as the real world slowly swam into focus. The woman next to him at the bar, who up to a few seconds ago, had looked at him with a mixture of pity and condension. Now, though, naked desire lit her eyes.

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><p>Harry felt himself waking up, stretching his 14-year-old body.<p>

And a few seconds later, became aware of the 21-year-old blonde snoring on the bed beside him, her body tangled up in the bedsheets.

Harry frowned, trying to fight a feeling of hollowness as memories of yet another meaningless romp washed over him. Oh sure, using his powers to seduce beautiful vivacious women gave him wonderful sensations in the evening... but the next morning, it left him feeling pointless.

No... it wasn't _just_ that.

_Godhood_ felt hollow, felt pointless.

He yawned, not bothering to muffle the sound. This woke the woman, but Harry didn't care in the slightest. He'd already lived through this scene enough times. The woman would see him, realize that she'd bedded a way-too-young teenager and quickly find her own way out of the place. It's not like she'd want to spend time around a 14-year-old bean pole, at least not of her own free will.

Harry didn't even need to look at the nameless woman to know that her face was probably trying to hide a sense of self-shame; honestly, moments like this almost made him wonder if he should use his divine manipulations to bed girls his own age but... honestly, what 14 year old would pass on getting to sleep with 20-somethings? The fun in the evenings was _easily_ worth the guilt in the mornings.

Harry absently waved his wrist; all of a sudden, the boy's rumpled clothes lifted off the ground and began folding themselves.

He idly twisted a finger; a new set of clothes zoomed into his hand from a nearby dresser.

"I... should be going... have you seen my... things?"

Harry didn't even look at the older woman. Instead, he twisted his wrist again; a bra disentagled itself from beneath the blankets and zoomed into her hand.

"Oh," she said with an embarassed look, "I had it in my hand and didn't even realize it."

That, the teen-god had to admit, was the weirdest thing about his divinity: nobody remembered afterwards when he performed celestial acts; they thought whatever he did had been that way all along. Harry knew if he asked the woman, she'd insist that her bra must've been in her hand the entire time, despite her clearly seeing exactly what he did.

The woman dressed hastily, clearly embarassed by how young of a boy she had bedded. Amusingly, she thought he was merely 14, while Harry believed himself to only be 5 - after all, the teenaged boy remembered himself springing into existance from nothingness roughly a half decade earlier (and in the approximate body of a 9 year old.) Hey, nobody said godhood was normal.

Harry shrugged, trying to shake off his mental funk while the woman departed. He began poking around the house - which he was technically "borrowing" (from whom, he had no idea.) Might as well look around and see if there were any novelties to distract him.

However, ten minutes into his exploration, he was getting confused. Something was... off.

At a cursory glance, it would seem like the house was normally occupied. It had beds with sheets, running appliances, scattered everyday items, and was actually pretty darned clean. But something didn't seem right.

And Harry then slowly noticed... it was 1994, but nothing he could see was dated past the late 80's, and most things looked closer to early-to-mid-80's. Granted, having a 10-year-old tv wasn't unusual (most people didn't have brand new appliances), but... _nothing at all_ bought within the last decade or so? That seemed almost excessively frugal.

Curious, Harry peeked into one of the small bedrooms. It looked to be the former room of a teenager, and it was starting to convince Harry that something was _definitely_ odd here. There were posters on the wall - but of bands and movies that didn't quite fit, highlighting flash-in-the-pans and "upcoming" movies that had already faded to obscurity. The clothes looked equally out of place for a modern male teenager. The thing that sealed the deal was a pair of gray Parachute Pants. Those were already going out of style 5 years ago - _nobody_ would be caught dead wearing them in 1994.

"Huh," Harry said to himself. "Guess the house must have been abandoned years ago."

But he realized, that didn't make sense, either. Why wouldn't the place have been packed up? Why wouldn't it have been sold? Or reposessed? This was a _house_ in the suburbs - it couldn't just sit out there, unnoticed and unclaimed for years on end.

Harry noticed a small leather book in the dresser; curious, he pulled it out.

"Samwell," he said, reading the cover.

He opened it and quickly saw that it was a diary. He casually tossed it back into the dresser and took a few steps as if to leave the room...

And then smiled. No reason he couldn't use this diary to figure out what happened with the house, right?

He went back to the dresser, grabbed the diary, and flipped to find the last entry.

'2/15/88 - Slipping Back'

Harry looked up from the book, going a bit pale. The date was a really worrying coincidence. Harry emerged into existance on Feburary 19th; what are the odds that the last diary snippet happened to be written 4 days earlier?

He quickly read the entry.

'It was worth it, sneaking out of the castle for valentine's day with Eliza.'

"_Castle?_" Harry asked himself, raising an eyebrow. What, the kid that wrote this is royalty? Or just someone with an over-active imagination?

'Problem was, King's Cross won't open until 6 AM, which meant we can't sneak through Platform 9 3/4's until then. Once we get there, the public floo can take us to the Hogwarts receiving area... but there will probably already be students up and about. If word gets back to Flitwick, we'll end up with detention, especially if the castle's on warning lockdown again. Still, it'll be worth it, considering what we did yesterday...'

Harry frowned. A lot of that entry didn't make sense. He was willing to guess that a "Public Floo" was some sort of train (why else would it be at King's Cross?) - maybe some sort of luxury mini-train that castle-dwellers used? But the part that flummoxed him the most was... Harry had actually been to King's Cross three times, and he could swear that the platforms were labeled with simple numbers - certainly not with fractions.

Harry started skimming earlier entries in Samwell's diary... blinking in disbelief at places when the author had described some of their past deeds.

One thing was certain.

Samwell was also a god.

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	2. Journey from a Broken Platform

**Chapter 2 - Journey from a Broken Platform**

Of course, the next step was obvious: Visit Hogwarts.

Samwell had inadvertently given away how to get to it. And if there _were_ other gods on this planet, and they did indeed go to a castle by that name... maybe Harry could finally get some answers about his existence.

Ordinarily, Harry wasn't much for planning. Why would he need to? If someone were peeved at him, he could twist their mind. If they reported it to a constable, he'd just do it to the policeman instead. And if there were multiple officers on scene? Then he'd just wait until he was on the docket and tweak the magistrate.

Now, though?

Suddenly, planning seemed a bit more important. After all, for all he knew, his ability to delve into the mental subconscious of someone only worked on mortals. He couldn't depend on being able to do that to other gods? It simply might not work - or worse, they might be angered by the attempt - and for all Harry knew, he was the least powerful divine being on the planet.

So, he actually sat down for a good hour, trying to think of every possible contingency.

The first, and most obvious problem: how to get from King's Cross to Hogwarts? Sure, Samwell had mentioned the existence of a deluxe mini-train 'floo', but Harry couldn't depend on that being available for him. For all he knew, it might be something that Hogwarts Chartered, or even outright owned by the Samwells.

Which was why Harry was now wobbling quite a bit as he drove a brand new motorcycle off the lot. Sure, what he was doing was technically "stealing." But it was hardly a risk, considering the surveillance camera covering the lot was _coincidentally_ knocked down by some "wind", and the only salesman on the lot at the time could _swear_ he saw a tall redheaded woman making off with the bike.

Godhood was _awesome._

The second problem was... he had no clue where Hogwarts was. Oh, he was pretty sure he could follow the tracks the mini-floo took. The problem was, for all he knew, Hogwarts might be all the way to the very northern tip of the main isle - which would certainly be a two day trip.

Which meant he couldn't just wing it and start riding. He'd need food and water, at minimum. Most everything else he could think of - a flashlight, a cell phone, a computer laptop - would be worse than useless. Samwell had made it clear in his diary that regular mortal appliances simply didn't work around Hogwarts.

And, lastly - and it was a bit embarrassing that he'd almost missed this one: spare petrol. Harry was initially thinking that he could do what every other driver did: simply pull over and get more petrol when the tank was getting close to empty. The problem was, what if the floo tracks didn't take him near towns? Or worse, if you strayed far enough away from the tracks, they would disappear?

Harry had no clue how far a motorcycle could travel on a single tank. Could they make it all the way to Thurso in one go? He was pretty sure the bike couldn't make it there _and back_ without some additional fuel. Better to play it safe.

And, ironically, with all that planning he was stymied five minutes into his adventure.

Getting into King's Cross with a motorcycle? No problem (divinity solves minor issues like that.)

Finding Platform 9 3/4? Not so easy.

Platform 10 was just to his left; Platform 9 was further off to his right. The problem was, there certainly didn't look like there was a train platform between them.

But... it _had_ to be between them, right? If it wasn't here, then why would they have named it '9 3/4' instead of something like Platform 15, or Platform G? There was no conceivable reason for them to give it a _number_ between 9 and 10 if the platform _itself_ wasn't between 9 and 10. No, it _had_ to be here.

But more than that... it was "three quarters". That was actually quite a bit specific. If they wanted a generic number between 9 and 10, wouldn't it have simply been 'Platform 9 1/2'? Three-Quarters implied a definite distance between 9 and 10.

Harry eyeballed the signs for Platforms 9 and 10, eyeballing his distance and moving until it looked like he was about 75% of the distance between the pair. Now, if Samwell wasn't just making things up, _this_ is where the platform was. This is where he needed to look.

Fortunately, there wasn't much to examine; it's not like the train station had tons of nooks and crannies. For the most part, it was just flat open space, with the occasional support pillar made out of brick - one of which was right next to him.

Mentally shrugging, Harry tried to run his finger over the bricks - and was quite shocked when the tip passed through as though the pillar was made out of a thin liquid instead of solid stone.

In a bit of shocked panic, Harry wondered if someone saw what happened. That'd be a bit of nasty luck - some mortal walking by would happen to see it and... oh.

Harry realized he was being stupid. Nobody ever remembered when Harry did his acts. Why should this be any different? He could probably submerge half his body, turn around, and sing show-tunes for an hour, and people would just think he was an animatronic display that had always been built into the pillar. Sure enough, none of the other people in King's Cross was paying him the least bit of attention.

Holding his breath, Harry pushed himself and the motorcycle into the pillar. He stumbled a bit as he arrived on the other side of the portal. Harry had honestly been expecting a secret cubby-space, or an elevator that would descend down to a different train platform. He was _not_ expecting to arrive in what looked like a completely separate building!

The room looked like it was, at one time, decorated the same way as the rest of King's Cross. The same stoneworkings, the same decorative railings, the same fonts on the signage. But unlike King's Cross, this place looked like it had lived through some untold apocalypse.

Rock had collapsed in places from the ceiling. The train tracks were bent in places and cluttered with debris. There were no signs of anyone having touched this place for quite some time.

Harry fished Samwell's diary out of his backpack, flipping to the last entry so he could reread it.

"A... Public Floo..." Harry muttered. Harry wished he had more to go on - he was just guessing what this 'Floo' was. But, if he was right about it being a mini-train, then there was obviously no 'Public Floo' here at the moment. And, even if it did, he doubted it could navigate the twisted and bent metal rails.

"Good thing I brought the bike," Harry said, congratulating himself.

Harry climbed down onto the tracks, staring out along the pair of steel beams. Strangely, the rails led to an outside world that was _not_ the London Metro, but some picturesque countryside.

Harry frowned. This was an entirely different order of deific act. It was one thing to move things around or manipulate peoples' minds... but to create an archway that teleports people to somewhere else?

For a minute, Harry nursed the suspicion that he wasn't actually teleported at all - that he was still back in mortal King's Cross and hallucinating all of this. Or, worse, that Platform 9 3/4 was some sort of divine trap for gods, and that any moment some monstrous eldritch horror would arriving to devour his soul. But a few seconds later, he realized he was being a bit _too_ paranoid. After all, Samwell had went through this place as well - it matched his description - and clearly it hadn't been something dangerous and lethal. After all, Samwell survived to write the diary entry, right?

Then another horrible thought: that the archway _had_ teleported him... but to someplace across the globe. He'd been working with the assumption that he could get back to London and civilization without too much difficulty; but that might not be true if he was in some isolated nook of, say, northern Canada.

But then, that didn't make sense, either. It looked like it was the same time of day. If he'd been whisked away to the Americas, it'd be pretty obvious because it was still the middle of the night over on that portion of the globe. Harry supposed that it was possible he'd been teleported to France or Spain or something, but... no, that didn't make sense, either. That stormcloud to the southwest was the same one that was threatening a rainy day for London. So wherever he was, it was at least _close_ to where he'd started.

Slowly, Harry smiled. And then grinned. He situated himself on the motorcycle and began to speed off alongside the tracks, eager to find his way to Hogwarts.

The first hour was exciting! He was travelling on some strange and mystical adventure! The feel of a new motorcycle speeding him through the cool country air as he drew further away from London and the pending rainstorm.

The second hour was humdrum. His adrenaline had worn off, and the novelty of the adventure had lost its edge.

By the eighth hour, Harry was beginning to think this escapade was the most mind-numbingly boring quest ever. Second after second, minute after minute, of an annoyingly loud motorcycle engine droning a mere meter from his ears while he rode on gravel next to an endless stretch of train rails.

The worst part was, by the time Harry had grown bored of this adventure, he knew it would take several hours just to get back to London. He had assumed that he had to be at least travelling as fast as a train would. Did Samwell and all the other godly brethren honestly sit on a locomotive for several hours on end just to get where they were going? That seemed rather silly. Or maybe he was wrong. Maybe a 'Floo' wasn't a mini-train; maybe it was a really high speed rail car?

But at the ninth hour mark, a castle emerged on the horizon.

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	3. Torches and Impressions

**Chapter 3 – Torches and Impressions**

But at the ninth hour mark, a castle emerged on the horizon.

Harry laughed in relief.

As he approached the strange looking fortress, Harry had a depressing thought. One of the things Samwell mentioned in his diary was that mortal appliances (Samwell called them 'muggle' for some reason) wouldn't work at the castle. Something interfered with the electronics. And knowing Harry's luck, the motorcycle would burst into flames a dozen kilometers away, forcing Harry to trek on foot for another few hours.

But it looked like Samwell was wrong. Not only was Harry able to zip along the castle grounds in his vehicle, but even the lights on the electronic dash never stopped working, even as Harry coasted to a stop right next to the oversized front doors of the castle.

And what a strange castle. It looked like the architect of it didn't seem to know what gravity was, as several towers seemed to be built with obscene slants of varying degrees. The windows on those belfries didn't line up correctly, either, but were just as tilted as the towers themselves. It also looked like the architect had never heard of a right angle, either, with edges and slants that never seemed to quite make sense. It gave Harry a bit of a headache just trying to mentally process the design; clearly, whomever designed the building was at least slightly insane.

Propping the bike up against the stone walls of the castle, Harry ventured up to the entrance. He pushed open the large oak doors without too much effort. The smell of dank air wafted out from the entryway, making his nose wrinkle. There were no lights inside, nor any windows; the only illumination was the late-afternoon light shining through a partially opened door... and that was barely enough to see that the room functioned as a sort of entry foyer.

Harry frowned, realizing he had a problem. Samwell had (wrongly) said that electronics wouldn't work at the castle - so Harry purposely didn't bother bringing a flashlight. While he might be able to get through this room with the light trckling through the open door, there was no way he could go any further into the castle unless every room just happened to have a window.

There were unlit torches lining the edges of the hall, but Harry didn't know what he was supposed to do with that. Did torches require fuel? He was pretty sure it wasn't as simple as 'Torches are Burning Wood' - weren't they dipped in petrol and then the fumes of the gas burned?

He supposed it didn't really matter. Sure, he had petrol if it was required, but he had no way of actually lighting it either way.

Or... did he? "Maybe I could conjure some fire?" Harry said to himself. He'd never tried that before - he didn't even really know if it was possible. But, well, what kind of god couldn't invoke a fiery wrath of brimstone? _Surely_ he could at least light a torch, right?

He threw his arms forward, concentrating with deliberate focus. Nothing.

He tried snapping his fingers with a casual air. Still nothing.

He threw his hands heavenward, eyes blazing with the fury of an nigh-omnipotent deity.

Still nothing.

"Damnit," Harry swore. Some god he was!

"Okay," he said, talking to himself. "Maybe there's a switch? Something that will turn the tor..." He didn't bother finishing the sentence; it sounded too stupid to say aloud. A light switch that... turned on torches?

Still, Harry walked along the edge of the room, trying to find something that would help him out, only to be surprised by the nearest torch. It had started to faintly flicker before slowly growing into a full-fledged flame!

Harry looked at it in a bit of shock, not certain what he was supposed to do. It wasn't often that fires burst into being for no apparent reason. Maybe his godly powers of pyromancy were time-released?

He cautiously backed away from the artifact... and the flame dimmed into darkness.

He approached once again... and the torch ignited once more.

Frowning, Harry tentatively pulled the torch out from its wall sconce, slowly waving it in front of him. It didn't _seem_ like any sort of trickery, or some sort of weird illusion. From everything he could see and hear, it was a lit with a genuine flame. He could even feel the gentle heat flowing from the flames - and the shadows of the room even moved as Harry manuevered the torch. If Harry hadn't known better, hadn't seen it light and un-light itself, he would've sworn that this was just a regular torch.

Harry frowned further. He honestly wanted to put the blasted thing back on the wall - it's not like he trusted it. But then again, unless he wanted to make the trek back to civilization, he had no other way of lighting up the halls of this abandoned building.

Shaking his head, Harry walked along the edges of the room with his new light source, cautiously looking around while avoiding bits of stone that had fallen from the ceiling. Each torch along the perimeter would also light up as he approached, and fade to darkness when he moved far enough away.

Harry pushed open the door on the other side of the entrance hall, revealing a corridor that had collapsed on itself halfway along its length.

Frowning, Harry peeked through each arch as he walked along the accessible part of the hallway.

The largest one led to a huge expansive room - so large that his torch couldn't reach the ceiling or the walls. Tattered blue and bronze banners lay atop what looked like flotsam from a shipwreck - tattered beams and planks of wood shattered and splintered. Harry tried without luck to try to imagine what the room would've been like before it fell into disrepair.

The second archway led to what looked like an immense, convoluted stairwell. But like Hogwarts itself, it seemed designed by a deranged madman. Most of the stairs didn't seem to lead to proper landings, and instead just jutted off at random directions into nothingness. It didn't help that no two staircases seemed the same - they all differed by width and style and height. It also made Harry wonder just how much underground excavation they did while building Hogwarts, because Harry was on the ground floor, but it looked like there were at least four levels of landings beneath him.

The final archway led to yet another destroyed corridor - and this time, the destruction was so thorough that there were no other doors to explore.

Harry sighed, but eventually decided to peek around the huge room with broken wood all over the place. He figured the risk of getting a splinter was a lot safer than the risk of falling from a great height if he tried to navigate the stairwell.

Unfortunately, there wasn't much to see in the hall. The place looked pretty thoroughly destroyed, and even after poking around a bit closer, Harry still couldn't tell what the wood was from. There were some doors along the opposite side, but they were locked - and Harry didn't feel like trying to destroy them (or burn them down) just yet.

Sighing, Harry resigned himself to the fact that he was going to have to try to use the stairwell. There were currently three flights where he was at - and it was pretty easy to decide which one to use. The emerald stairs leading downward and the gray stairs leading two floors up were currently jutting off to nowhere. Only one of them actually seemed to hook into a platform landing.

He carefully started climbing one of the sets... and as he took a third step, the staircase began to... slide?

It was slow, and if you weren't paying attention, it might be overlooked. But now that Harry had noticed, it was undeniable: the stair was rotating, sluggishly inching away from the 2nd floor landing it had been docked at.

Harry quickly raced up the stairs, managing to get to the second floor landing before the steps could slide away more than a few centimeters - and as he stepped off the top step, the stairs once again became motionless.

Giving the stairs one last uncertain look Harry opened the second floor's landing door and saw, to very little surprise, another corridor.

However, this corridor looked relatively pristine. Sure, there were cobwebs along the walls and a few chunks of broken flooring - but compared to the last two cave-ins, it looked merely rundown instead of positively post-apocalyptic.

Every few meters along the stone walls, a wooden portrait frame hung - each holding what looked like blank canvas.

Now that was curious. Who framed and hung a slip of canvas without anything being painted on it? And it wasn't just one - every single frame held what looked like empty beige cloth.

Amused, Harry walked over to the closest frame to inspect it.

... and as he approached, the blank canvas shifted color. Harry smiled, expecting a painting to appear. But he was surprised when it simply turned to a bluish blur over a black background, like someone was holding a dim blue flashlight up against a black wall. While it wasn't _bad_ looking, it was still a rather strange thing to put upon a painting.

Maybe it was abstract art?

Confused, Harry approached the second frame. This time, a brownish blur over a black background.

Harry looked into each painting in the corridor - and most of them were just a painting-wide splotch of a single color - mostly blues, browns, purples, and reds. Dark, unobtrusive colors. Only a few of them looked like proper paintings when Harry approached - a pastoral countryside, a lazy stream, and an autumn orchard. Like the unlit torches, they all appeared like blank canvas if Harry wasn't nearby.

Harry tried to wrap his head around the strange artwork and eventually gave up, mentally shaking his head.

Time to move on.

Harry peeked into a few of the rooms lining the corridor, and wasn't surprised to see classrooms and storage closets.

Harry continued exploring, finding more classrooms, more empty stores - and more of the strange paintings.

Harry let out a combination sigh and yawn. It was certainly looking like this castle wasn't something he could explore in a single day - and he was already starting to get a bit tired (the bike ride over was taxing in itself.)

Scrounging through the second-floor classrooms, he gathered some pillows (he had no idea why classrooms would have them, especially since they didn't have couches or beds) and some cloth tapestries along the walls, using them to construct a makeshift bed in one of the few classrooms with a window (just in case his strange torch no longer worked tomorrow.)

After eating some of the dehydrated beef from his backpack, Harry settled down for his first night at Hogwarts. With a flash of inspiration, Harry pushed the torch slowly away from his body, watching it dim until it was just the soft glow of a nightlight.

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	4. God of the Ancients, Slayer of Spiders

**Chapter 4 - God of the Ancients and Slayer of Giant Spiders**

Harry awoke far earlier than he would've liked - simply because a few cloth tapestries over a hard stone floor wasn't much of a bed cushion.

Harry looked in his backpack, deciding that he should try to find something around here he could eat. He probably only had 3-4 days worth of food in his backpack. If it took a day to make the trip back to London, that didn't leave a whole lot of time to look around.

Several hours later, Harry _still_ hadn't been able to find a single foodstuff in his search through the broken castle. It seemed like the castle was just an endless array of classrooms and storage closets - nothing that would even hint at where someone could sleep, could eat, or could drink.

Groaning, Harry decided to give up on finding food inside. Sure, there might be some _somewhere_, but it would take him weeks to search every corridor.

He made his way back to the castle entrance, exiting onto the surrounding grounds. It didn't take 5 minutes before he saw a rather large lake on the other side of the castle - so at least he didn't have to worry about finding water.

However, what really interested him was the series of greenhouses along the western side of the castle.

Or at least they must have been greenhouses at some point. The metal frames were still standing for the most part, but there were very few window panes left intact. Instead, the glass glinted off the afternoon sun, scattered on the grass circling each building.

Slightly worrisome, sounds of feral life were coming from each greenhouse - clicks, hisses, caws; each of the enclosures seemed to be filled to the brim with overgrowing vegetation. It reminded Harry more of an untamed jungle glade than anything else.

A strange copper-colored glinting caught Harry's eye near the second greenhouse. At first he guessed that some of the glass for that building must've been originally tinted... but as he walked closer, he could see that it wasn't just glass littering the ground. Instead, there were weapons scattered along the grass - bronze daggers, bronze swords, a few bronze spears.

Harry prodded a few with his feet, curious whether he'd see blood on any of them... but they all looked pristine.

"Why would a bunch of weapons just be lying here?" he asked himself, shaking his head. You would think something like this would be hung up in the castle. Castles had armories, right?

Still, he was more than happy to pocket a couple of the daggers and grab the sword - maybe it was just his imagination running wild, but having a weapon while exploring Hogwarts just seemed to... fit. Harry was tempted to pick up one of the spears as well, but he figured if he ever ended up needing it, he could just come back here and grab it; it had sat here for several years already, after all, and it's not like there was anyone else here to take them first.

With trepidation, Harry turned towards the greenhouse. The sounds of wildlife within began to sound ominous, and Harry wondered how many things in there could hurt him.

Swallowing, he stepped inside, eschewing the door in favor of a section where the plants looked pretty sparse and benign. A few vines began curling towards him when he entered, but after Harry batted one aside with the sword, they all began to scamper away.

He couldn't see too far into the greenhouse from here, because a large thick brush with small blue flowers was blocking his sight. He tried using his sword to push aside a limb to make way - and all of a sudden, the blue flowers on that limb all curled to face him directly and shot a thin shard-like needle out in self-defense.

Harry flinched, but none of the projectiles hit him - clearly the plant wasn't terribly accurate at hitting predators. Which was quite a bit lucky - those needles looked rather long, and if the sounds around him were any indication, may actually have been made of metal. Harry chopped his sword at the limb, severing it. The plant let out a raspy shriek and then seemed to collapse in on itself protectively, positioning itself so that it formed a sphere with all of its remaining flowers facing outward like a strange blue floral sphere, reminding Harry of a porcupine.

As the plant shrunk down and revealed more greenhouse behind it, Harry saw several flashes of gray fur - a pack of animals began quickly retreating once they saw him, each about the size of large rabbit.

However, one of the furry creatures tried to run by the wrong plant, and a large snarled tentacle swooped down from the rafters and wrapped around it. A sick crunching sound announced the snapping of the victim's bones.

Almost on instinct, Harry quickly swung the sword again and severed the killer tentacle. He snatched up the dead furry creature and quickly retreated from the greenhouse.

The dead animal looked pretty similar to a raccoon - it was a hairy quadraped at least. But instead of paws it had some rather vicious looking talons, and its head was shaped almost bird-like with a beak for a mouth.

Harry had to admit, he was curious about whether it was edible. He couldn't think of any reason why it _wouldn't_ be. Gathering firewood off the ground wasn't too difficult – there were woods surrounding most of the castle grounds, after all. After collecting a bundle, he lit it on fire with his torch.

While the fire was growing, Harry turned to face the animal laying on the ground. Tilting his head, he made a slapping motion with his hand, almost as if he was trying to hit the dead animal from a few meters away. An small explosion of fur made Harry cough - but when the fuzz cleared, he could see the vermin was missing a quarter of its hair. Several more 'slaps' of divine power, and Harry had the beast plucked. He absentmindedly made a gesture with his hands, and the animal began levitating to a place above the fire and slowly rolling end over end.

A half hour later, Harry found out just how hard it was to rotisserie cook a larger animal - how cool the heat needed to be and how _long_ it would take to properly bake. The outside of the animal was almost blackened, but when he cut it open with a dagger, nearly all of the insides still looked raw.

Peeved, Harry grabbed his sword sliced the thing into smaller chunks while it floated in the air - only stopping his swings when there were no chunks of meat larger than a few centimeters across. If he couldn't cook the whole thing at once, he could at least roast it like it were chunks of a shish kebab, right?

Fifteen minutes of cooking later, and he had a large assortment of nuggets that had been cooked relatively convincingly. Sure, there were some chunks that had a blackened side (the ones originally on the outside of the animal), but now at least there was a chance the thing was edible.

A bit warily, Harry waved his hand to float the bits of meat out of the fire. When they cooled quite a bit, he cautiously gave one a try.

... and didn't know what to think. It wasn't good. It wasn't exactly _bad_. It was just... weird.

"Meh," he said halfheartedly. It was edible, he was hungry, and this would spare him from having to dip into his backpack.

Harry sighed as he finished his makeshift meal, looking around the strange ancestral grounds of Hogwarts. Part of him wondered... was all of this worth it? Sleeping on hard stone, having to hunt strange animals for food? If he were back in London, he could eat whatever he wanted, sleep wherever he wanted, and, well, have the companionship of whatever attractive woman he wanted.

But the thing was... this was the first good lead he'd ever had - the first chance Harry had ever come across on finding out just why he was a god.

It was getting a bit late - probably only an hour or so before sunset - so Harry decided to just explore a corridor or two before calling it a night. If he was honest with himself, he was hoping that he'd find a bed to sleep on.

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><p>Five days later, Harry awoke with soreness - for the sixth day in a row. For a castle built by the gods, it was surprisingly monotonous - empty classrooms, empty store rooms, and that was about it. Did other gods not sleep or eat? Or for that matter, actually do anything other than study?<p>

Not surprisingly, Harry had been spending most of his time exploring the grounds instead. He'd gotten good at using a spear to kill the mimic-fish in the shallows of the lake (he found the trick was jump around, which caused the fish to flop around the surface of the water.) He'd mentally cataloged two whole greenhouses worth of plants, especially the squirter plant which you could extract a honey-like treat if you pressed a warm bronze blade against it. He'd even managed to kill a few more of those raccoonish animals, after he figured out that they always returned to the same place to feed on the blink plants that jumped in an out of reality depending on the time of day.

The highlight of the week, though, was the large, 2-meter-wide spider that he'd fought the day before.

Oh, sure, it hadn't been fun at the time. If he was honest, Harry had been terrified out of his mind during the actual fight. And the spider hadn't even turned out to be edible - the meat was gamey and disgusting.

But looking back on the memory, it made him seem like some sort of epic hero-explorer.

Harry Potter: God of the Ancients and Slayer of Giant Spiders. It sounded good, at least.

Better than Harry Potter: Explorer of an Abandoned Castle with Nothing In it. A role was quickly becoming quite boring.

"Hello?"

Harry froze midstep at the surprise of hearing someone else's voice.

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	5. An Absent Ravenclaw Riddle

**Chapter 5 - An Absent Ravenclaw Riddle**

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><p>"Hello?" the voice asked again, weakly echoing off stone wall.<p>

Harry turned around, trying to see where the sound came from.

"Can you hear me?"

Harry ventured forward slowly, making sure he had his sword in hand.

"Hello!" the voice called out brighter. "You there, brave lad, with the sword!"

Harry looked around... and finally found the source of the sound. It was a... painting?

And unlike every other painting in the castle, this one was actually a portrait of a person - a blond-haired man with a pair of glasses.

The man in the portrait smiled with happy relief. This shocked Harry at first - whoever heard of a portrait that could move and talk? But then again, was it really stranger than anything else he'd run across so far?

"Oh, thank goodness," the portrait said. "I thought I had fallen asleep forever!"

Harry blinked. "What are you?"

"My name," the portrait said happily, "Is Augustus Pappilion, second son of..."

The portrail trailed off, a frown coming to its face.

"Second son of...?" Harry asked.

"I... don't know. I'm the second son of someone, though, I'm sure of it."

Harry glanced around. "Are there other paintings like you? If I had known, I wouldn't have given up examining them after the first few dozen."

"Of course there are others like me," Augustus said haughtily. "I'll just ask..."

Once again, the portrait trailed off into silence.

"Something wrong?" Harry asked, an eyebrow raised.

"I know I'm not alone here - I know that in years past, I talked with a large number my neighbors... but for the life of me, I can't remember any of them. And I know I've talked with countless people like you... except I can't remember any of them, either."

"Large number of neighbors?" Harry asked. "You mean, like neighbor paintings? How? You've only got one painting on the left and one on the right."

"That's not a problem," Augustus said loftily. He moved out of frame, disappearing for a moment - before appearing in the nearby painting to the right.

"That's a neat trick," Harry said, smiling. "You can go to any painting you want?"

"Absolutely. I shall go to the painting in the library and come back."

A few minutes went by, but Augustus didn't reappear.

"How long does this 'going to the library' take?" Harry asked himself uncertainly.

Several minutes later, Harry was beginning to get worried. Talk about horrible luck – the first person he'd seen or talked to, and something bad happened to them within minutes of Harry arriving.

Harry camped out for nearly an hour, sitting on the ground beneath the now-absent painting - making absolutely sure that Augustus wasn't coming back.

And then a slow creeping horror dawned on Harry. He knew exactly what the problem was. The torch, the stairwells, the paintings - they only 'worked' while they were close to Harry. Augustus tried to travel to a painting that wasn't nearby!

Harry felt himself starting to panic - would Augustus die? Would Harry ever find him again even if he was still alive? Forcing himself to calm down and think things through, Harry said, "He said he's going to the library - so that means there's a library here in the castle I haven't found yet."

Frowning, he wondered aloud, "Why did Augustus say he was going to the library, though? Why not just 'down the hall' or 'the floor above here'? He seemed like he was bragging, as if to say 'I could even go as far as the library!'... so... maybe the library is a room really far away from here? Like at the opposite end of the castle?"

Figuring it was as good of a guess as any, Harry tried to piece things together. "I'm in the northern wing... so maybe the Library's on the southern castle face? That part of the castle only had 7 floors, so maybe it's all the way up on the seventh?"

It seemed like a long-shot. But he didn't see anything else he could try.

Harry made his way back to the main stairwell, trying to decipher how the stairs connected the various floors. Thankfully, the steps didn't move unless he was actually standing on them - which meant Harry could simply stand on one of the landings while he planned out how to get to his destination, without anything moving around and distracting him. He shuddered to think how difficult it would be if that weren't the case, trying to plot out a route while ignoring a fleet of roaming stair-flights.

It took him awhile to figure out a path - it was made more difficult because the only stairs upwards from his fourth floor landing went to the sixth floor... but to get to either the fifth or seventh floors, he had to go down to the second floor beforehand.

... and then, after five minutes of careful navigation to arrive on the right floor, he realized that he'd gotten turned around and ended up on the northern platform on the seventh floor! He'd have to go back down to floor five, get on the other staircase going up, and then wait for it to rotate into position.

Honestly! Was it really that hard to just make stairs that went to every floor? Who built this stupid place? He found himself wishing to figure out a way to fly or teleport - if only so he didn't have to worry about doing this ever again.

The seventh floor's southern ledge held a single large pine door, one that looked at least 12 foot tall. Pushing it open, Harry looked at a large room that at first glance looked like a library that had collapsed in on itself, with shelves knocked askew, and all of the books in the room having toppled into a mess on the floor.

However, as Harry looked closer, he could see something strange going on. Those shelves that at first seemed to be tilted and toppled onto one another? They seemed to actually be bolted to the ground that way, to be constructed at those angles. But it made no sense - if someone were to go over and try to put a book on those shelves, it would just slide out the edge and fall to the ground.

Actually, that would explain why all the books were on the ground.

Harry took a step towards one of the tilted bookcases, and as he approached, something rather odd happened. Gravity itself seemed to twist, to distort - realigning itself so that the shelf he was next to was facing straight vertical, and all the other shelves were turned oddly.

Curious, Harry started walking to another shelf. It was the strangest experience, making Harry feel a bit queasy. The ground looked completely straight and normal - it looked as level as any room or building Harry had ever been in before... yet walking on it felt like he was walking on the inside of a large spherical chamber, with all the bookshelves on either side curving upward around him, pointing towards a center point dozens of meters overhead.

And then Harry realized: the library was built this way to save space. For some unholy reason, the person who built this library decided the easiest way to cram in more bookshelves was to mess with how gravity worked.

... and like the torches and paintings, that power seemed to no longer be working (unless Harry was nearby.)

"Hello?!"

Harry could have slapped himself; he'd forgotten why he came to the library in the first place.

"Don't go anywhere," Harry immediately shouted to Augustus.

"I learned my lesson, thank you very much," came the reply.

Harry walked over to the painting mounted on the end of one of the bookshelves. Sure enough, the blond-haired Mr. Pappilion's face was upon it.

"I must say, I'm glad you rescued me," Augustus said gratefully. "Almost makes me forgive your earlier act of rudeness."

"Rudeness?"

"You didn't tell me your name in return."

"Oh. My name is Harry Potter."

"Well, Mr. Potter, I think you should pick me up."

"Pick you up?"

"Or pick up the painting frame, rather."

Harry frowned, walking over to the shelf and before unhooking the painting from the shelf's sideboard. Harry was hoping there was some better way of doing this - because while the wooden frame wasn't terribly heavy, it was still pretty large and bulky. He really didn't want to try to explore Hogwarts while toting it around everywhere.

Then again, this painting might be the only source of answers he was going to get.

"Augustus," Harry asked, "is there anywhere to sleep in the castle?"

"Of course," Augustus laughed. "Which house are you in?"

"... huh?"

"You can't go to the dormitories until you've been sorted."

"Sorted?"

"By the... by the... hmmm... I can't recall what method was used to sort students."

"Well, I really don't care which dormitory you point me towards, as long as it has a comfy bed."

"I'm afraid you'll find," he said haughtily, "that you won't be able to gain entrance to the dormitories unless you belong to the proper house. Otherwise, you'll be stopped by... by... er..."

Harry was really starting to get annoyed by how often Augustus couldn't remember important pieces of information. "Just tell me how to get to one of the dormitories."

"Ravenclaw, then," Augustus said after a few seconds' thought. "If you can solve the riddle, they might let you inside despite not being a part of the house."

Following Pappilion's directions, Harry found himself climbing one of the auxiliary towers along the norther face of the castle. They reached a dead end, however, with a very large painting at the end of the hall.

"There it is, through there," Augustus said.

Harry walked up to the blank canvas hanging. As he grew closer, the painting lit up with a blue backdrop with subtle swirls of bronze... but nothing else.

"I... I get it!" Harry said, slapping his forehead. "I can't believe how stupid I was. This bluish blur? It's not the painting, it's a backdrop of someone's portrait! Ordinarily, someone's face would be in front of this blur of color!"

Augustus nodded in agreement. "The question is, a portrait of whom?"

"You tell me. You said someone would be guarding the door, right?"

"Yes, but..." Augustus trailed off, seemingly conflicted and arguing with himself silently.

Harry set Augustus' frame down and carefully inspected the painting - which, according to Pappilion, was guarding a doorway that led to a series of dormitories.

Harry pulled out a dagger and tried to cut away a bit of the canvas. Oddly, though, the dagger seemed to be scraping against impossibly smooth glass, as though some invisible surface was covering the portrait.

"Godly protection," Harry said to himself, grinning. "Well, the solution to this problem is pretty easy."

He backed away from the portrait, moving to the other end of the corridor. After all, torches and portraits and stairwells only 'worked' when they were close to him, right? Why should 'godly protective enchantments' be any different?

Harry gestured with his hand at some nearby chunks of marble, using his powers to propel them back at the portrait from a distance.

Harry had been expecting to hear a 'Thunk' noise as the material hit - surely there was a door behind the painting, right? Instead, there didn't seem to be anything behind the painting at all; the marble slabs soared through into a passageway hidden behind the canvas.

After a dozen 'tosses', enough tears in the canvas had been made to allow easy entrance.

He smiled, picked up Augustus, and entered the dormitory tower. He couldn't help but cheekily say, "Guess you were right about Ravenclaw being the right place to go. Did you like how I solved that riddle?"

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	6. Answers from Augustus

**Chapter 6 – Answers from Augustus**

Augustus was a bit snooty. But he was also incredibly useful, and managed to get Harry further in his explorations within two days than Harry had done on a week of his own. First, Harry had explored the other three houses.

Slytherin looked almost untouched from the ruination plaguing the school - but Harry supposed that made sense, considering it was in the basement. Most of the decay within was due to water damage; the moisture from being underground had begun cracking the baseboards of furniture and was giving the whole place a moldy smell.

Gryffindor was in a tower that had been mostly destroyed. The only accessible rooms were the commons area and a single section of the male dormitories - and even those rooms were nearly clogged with rubble.

Hufflepuff looked completely barren. It actually took a bit of imagination to see the commons room and the dormitories for actual lodgings - without Augustus' help, Harry would've just assumed it was yet another classroom with adjoining study areas.

But being able to enter the dormitories gave him overwhelming evidence for something he hadn't expected.

Samwell wasn't a god.

Samwell was a warlock.

It wasn't even really debatable. All the clothes that were left in each of the dorms included ritualistic robes. All of the students had books that outlined the casting of spells. It was painfully obvious now that Hogwarts was a school for people to learn how to use magic.

Harry, though, wasn't sure he was willing to say that _he_ was a Warlock as well. Parts of it made sense, no doubt. But the spellbooks that were left behind? They droned on and on about wands, wand movements, latin incantations, and a bunch of other stuff that Harry had never used when performing his acts.

In a way, it was a disappointment. He was hoping that Hogwarts would be the clue to who he was, that he would have something in common with Samwell.

Speaking of which...

Harry pulled out the diary from his backpack.

"What's that?" Augustus asked.

"A diary from a student here named Samwell. Ever heard of him?"

"Is that his first name or last name?"

"I'm not sure."

"I don't think I've ever heard the name before."

Harry frowned. "Then why did you bother asking if it was a first name or a last name?"

The portrait ignored him.

Harry shook his head and started skimming through the small book. Samwell's diary didn't have a whole lot of information on specific magics - they were usually just mentioned off-handedly while talking about what he and his friends experienced day-to-day. However, it didn't take a whole lot of digging to find some specific magics that Samwell was taught - Vanishing and Summoning were the first two he found. And sure enough, both were listed under the Standard Book of Spells: Year 5.

"Looks like he was in his fifth year," Harry said absently to himself. "I wonder how old he was when arrived?"

"11 years old," Augustus answered.

Harry blinked in surprise. "I... I thought you didn't know who Samwell was."

"Everyone starts school after they turn 11."

"Wait. You said you didn't know _anyone_ that attends this school. How do you know they begin when they hit that age?"

August opened his mouth to answer, but no words came to him.

"Hold on a minute," Harry said, his head spinning, putting together some pieces of the puzzle that he hadn't seen were connected before. "Mortals can never remember when I perform anything divine. You can't remember Samwell, or anyone else like him. Maybe it's the same thing?"

"Divine acts?" Augustus scoffed. "I don't exactly consider myself religious."

Harry ignored him. If he'd learned anything from his experiences with the mortal women, it's that there was no argument could possibly convince Augustus of the existence of divine acts. The most surreal moment had been when he levitated the bra of a redhead and asked her what she saw happening. Somehow, the women's brain had convinced her that the bra had been _thrown_, and at each moment, she was simply seeing it _mid-arc_. Thirty seconds of levitation later? She still thought the _same thing_, that she was merely looking at it as it sailed through the air towards her - with no recollection or recognition that she had believed the same thing a half minute prior. It didn't matter what inconsistencies, what loops of logic, what shifting beliefs were required: it was _impossible_ for a mortal to recognize divine intervention.

Well, if that was the case, if Augustus couldn't remember deific acts either... Harry realized he had been talking with Augustus is the absolute worst way possible – all of his questions to Augustus were in ways that would require acknowledging the divine.

"There's no way it can be that simple..." Harry muttered to himself.

"What could be simple?" Augustus asked, but was ignored by the teen.

"Augustus? What is the official name of the position for the person that runs this place?"

"Headmaster, of course."

"What's the headmaster's name?"

"..."

"Don't worry about it. Say, where is the headmaster's office?"

"Inner-East wing, 8th floor. It's behind the..."

Harry grinned further when Augustus trailed off.

Finally, _finally_ things were at least making some sense. Magic (and divine acts) couldn't be remembered by anyone other than Harry. The mere name of a position had nothing to do with magic - there were 'headmasters' of all sorts of places... but the _name_ of this particular headmaster belonged to someone that was a warlock - therefore, Augustus couldn't remember it. The mere _location_ of Ravenclaw tower had nothing to do with magic (it was just at some position in a castle)... but the guardian to its entrance was a magical portrait - another something that would be unknowable to Augustus.

Better yet, Augustus had trailed off when he said that the headmaster's office was behind... something. It was pretty certain that 'something' was magical.

Harry felt a surge of excitement; he had to take a few minutes to convince himself that he needed to hold off exploring the 'Inner-East Wing on the 8th Floor' until the following day. The sun was getting close to setting, and one thing Harry had learned was that the amount of time it took to explore things around Hogwarts was always longer than you expected - and he didn't want to have to cut his expedition short because it was going late into the night.

The following morning, Harry quickly packed up his backpack and hefted the frame of Augustus to take along with him.

The Inner-East wing wasn't difficult to find - it seemed to be one of the main nexuses of the school, and it fortunately had a tower with a simple winding staircase that led from floor to floor (so he didn't have to spend minutes trying to plot how to go up a few floors... what were the architects of that grand entryway stairwell thinking?)

As for 'what' was guarding the headmaster's office... well, that didn't take a whole lot of guessing. The only thing in the small corridor was a stone gargoyle.

Harry didn't even try to approach it. For all he knew, it would try to kill anyone that went close to it - and as long as Harry stayed away, there was nothing the masonry could do to hurt him (because its magic wouldn't be 'active' unless Harry were near.)

Figuring that there wasn't any reason for the same trick to not work twice, Harry started using his godly powers to throw chunks of marble at the Gargoyle.

Unfortunately, solid stone is a lot harder to destroy than a thin layer of canvas. All the marble chunks seemed to do was knock out small chips in the surface.

Harry frowned. Time for a different approach.

He closed his eyes, clenching his hands, trying to levitate the statue... with no success. It was simply too heavy.

"Well, how the heck am I supposed to get this thing out of the way?" he asked himself.

Harry mentally tallied everything he could think of.

Throwing the masonry debris of the school wasn't working, because it wasn't hard enough to demolish the statue.

Lifting the gargoyle statue wasn't possible due to its weight.

He really didn't want to approach the gargoyle lest it come to life (which was especially prudent, since Harry had spent 20 minutes throwing stuff at it to try to destroy the thing.)

Harry briefly entertaining the notion that he just needed to find something harder and heavier to throw. Then he realized the problem with that; Harry could throw a small object quickly, but there was no way he could get the same speed in a larger object. Heck, if it was heavy enough, he might not even be able to lift it.

Harry tried listing off everything he'd uncovered within Hogwarts – trying to think if there was something he missed, or some power that would help him out.

He was only able to come up with one possibility; "Trap Ball?" he said to himself, frowning.

The day before, he encountered a rather perilous trap out in the grounds of the school - an iron sphere the size of a cannonball that was clearly designed for some nasty guard work. When Harry got within several meters of it, it started slowly rolling towards him, before quickly accelerating, and within a second it was rocketing through the air straight at him! Harry had managed to dodge, thankfully... and what happened afterward was almost comical. After all, the castle's magic didn't seem to work unless it was close to him... which meant the fast-traveling Trap Ball kept sailing under its own momentum until it crashed into the dirt nearly a hundred meters away.

Harry imagined that a Trap Ball had to be an incredibly useful thing under regular circumstances, with the Trap Ball continuously trying to hit or kill an intruder... but as it stood, unless Harry got close enough for the trap to actually "work", it was just another piece of garbage lying around the place.

Which, of course, meant that Harry could simply use his godly powers to levitate the thing, while staying a safe distance away from himself so it wouldn't activate.

He quickly made his way back out onto the grounds and found the blasted Trap Ball - still lying in a miniature crater its impact had made into the ground. Harry absently waved a hand, levitating it into the air. He carefully picked his way around the school, making sure to keep the dangerous artifact far enough away that it wouldn't come to life. Finally making his way back to the gargoyle, he used his abilities to place the cannonball on the opposite side of the gargoyle.

Swallowing, Harry started to approach the gargoyle (and the Trap Ball behind it) - not sure whether the gargoyle would become animate and try to kill him, or whether the Trap Ball would burst through the gargoyle and, well, try to kill him.

And after all that work, the result was about as anticlimactic as possible.

The garogyle didn't come to life. The Trap Ball didn't "burst" through the statue or anything quite so dramatic. Instead, a loud low-pitched squeal began to echo through the corridor as the base of the statue slid along the ground, inching its way away from the door and towards Harry. Within a few minutes, the Trap Ball hadn't broken the Gargoyle... but it _had_ pushed the statue out of the way.

Bemused, Harry used his powers to throw the Trap Ball out a nearby window.

He found a tight confined spiral staircase in the passageway the Gargoyle had been guarding. When Harry stepped on it, it began to ascend upwards... sort of. It was rather strange - he had the feeling of ascending, and he could see himself turning around the center support beam. The only problem was, Harry could see that he wasn't actually moving upwards - the door was still level with him, and the same window was just a half-meter above his head.

Deciding that something about the magic wasn't working properly, Harry began walking up the circling stairs manually - which was a bit harder than it looked, since they were already moving of their own accord anyway. Regardless, it worked, and less than a minute later, Harry found himself standing in the entryway of the Headmaster's office.

He opened the door, curious as to what he'd find inside.

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><p>Author's Note: I'm recovering pretty well from the surgery. I haven't actually written anything new for the last few weeks, but it's one of the reasons I like having a buffer: it lets me post an update even if I haven't had the time to type anything. Anyways, I'm hoping to get back into the story in the next week or so.<p>

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